My birthday is in 12.5 days in which I will be turning 29 for the ninth time (37), which is in spitting distance of 40 which is close to death.
What an auspicious way to being an entry, eh? But, I figured it was the right time to sit down and do half-year update. Because interestingly enough I find myself at a cross-roads, one of my own choosing, A decision doesn’t have to be made this second, but, I need to write it out at the very least to sort it out.
Academically, the school year has been amazing. Going to library school has to be one of the best decisions I ever made. I ended the first full year with a overall GPA of 3.88 (B+ in cataloging, of which I proudly wear), I won the Graduate Student Assistant job at the library, which means that my tuition is now paid for AND I have a job manning the reference desk at the graduate library. For one of my classes, I ended up helping design and implement WordPress for a local Detroit museum and will more than likely end up doing my archival practicum there as the archivist loves me. (She’s also pretty awesome as well!) One of my professors has tapped me to work for her company part-time, making really good money, as a web2.0 consultant of sorts which could possibly land me as a full-time gig when I graduate if it works out. I won a scholarship and am also being pushed to fine tune some of my student papers to publishing worth materials and submitting them to appropriate journals.
Several of my classmates and I are founding a new student organization (a student chapter of the Progressive Librarians Guild) and I’ve been tapped to take over presidential responsibilities of the local student chapter of ASIS&T. I’ve also been blogging over at Tech-Ink: A Librarian Collective about digital issues. I’m also the communications chair for the Graduate Student Union in my spare time.
Academically and professionally, everything is starting to fall into place.
Personally, things have been going on a more even keel. Lily and Pugsley (of ThePugKids) were surrendered to Ohio Pug Rescue when their temporary foster home fell through and I couldn’t take them with me nor could I find them a place temporarily until I could move into a place that would take more than one pet. This was heartbreaking for me, but, it was the right decision as their happiness and stability was my utmost concern over my own selfish need to make sure I kept alll three of the pug kids together.
I still have Wednesday (who has her own Twitter account) and not once has she shown any signs of abandonment by her siblings and seems pretty happy being the only pug in the household. I’ve ditched caging her at night (like I used to do when I had all three) and she sleeps with me on pillow mountain and has also taken it upon herself to wake me up every morning between 7-8am. Justin has taken a deep liking to her because “she’s lazy and I can respect that” but other than that, she turns 9 in July and she is still as cantankerous as ever. I love her even more so.
Life in Royal Oak has turned out to be pretty good to me and I’ve met a lot of awesome people. One of my girlfriends and I have started meeting every Tuesday for knitting night (and yet I’m still no closer to finishing any of my projects) and I hang out with a few other people as well. Most of the time though I spend at home solo as this past semester was really academically stimulating and I now love nothing more than doing nothing.
Justin and I are still going at it pretty strong as he’s been out to see me several times since I’ve moved for extended periods. It helps that he telecommutes for his job so he’s been able to work from the apartment while I go about my merry little way. The apartment is a little over 600sqft which is fine for one person and a pug but when he moves in in July, it will be a bit cramped. Graduation is set forth for end of August or December of 2010 depending on how I get those final classes laid out. And after that? Who knows? Justin and I have a zillion different life styles planned out for us that take us from living in a small English village to a condo in Chicago. Trips are being planned for far off exotic locales such as Florida (well, Key West) and beyond during our vacation times. A proposal and a wedding are sure to follow at some point. I just don’t know when. So over all, life is good.
I’m finding my way around Detroit and I’m fairly comfortable with the city. There are some parts, architecturally, that are so beautiful that it is heartbreaking and simultaneously so desolated and run down, it is also equally heartbreaking. I haven’t done as much exploring as I would have liked, considering that we’ve had such a rough and long winter (snows until end of April) that the idea of exploring just wasn’t palpable. But now that the glorious spring days are here, I’m totally up for it. I do miss watching my daffodils sprout and strut at Wilcox Park the beginning of every spring.
The cross-roads is that last summer I started a writing project of which I only completed one piece of flash fiction, submitted it to several websites for consideration only to find that the databases took a dump shortly after I did the submission and thus lost my work. By the time I found out, I was gutted and also too busy to re-submit and start over. So that project was shelved for the time being. Justin has always been my biggest supporter when it came to my writing and while he’s not the first person to suggest I could make a living at it, he’s been the most vocal and the most pushy about it.
For Single Awarness Day this year the only thing he wanted from me was a short story of which I never wrote. I had ideas™ but nothing ever really came to fruition. Lately, more so then ever, I’ve become envious of people I know who are living the writerly life. It seems that I keep running into people or meeting them digitally who create these fantastic worlds around their writing and the tentacles of their work stretch far and wide. Writing was always the one thing I thought I was quite good at, something I really, really wanted to do and it seems however that the more involved I become with this new profession of mine, the more intense and time-suckage it becomes, the least likely I’ll make a living as a writer – and not just a writer, but an author.
So even though I’m heading on this really great career path that I’m passionate about, there is still this niggling feeling that I need to stop absorbing other people’s work and create my own. This is not to say that I want to give up doing what I’m doing – not by a long shot, but I really need to figure out how how to make the two worlds converge. Lessening up my activity on Twitter might be a good start as well as starting to plot out what it is I want to write. Justin has always said that I could be a really great writer if I start actually writing again, doing something more than dropping non-sequitors in Twitter or writing provocative posts on my blog or other places. The talent is there but it’s waning and it needs to be fed.
I met a friend of mine for breakfast meeting the other day and as it usually is with me, we ended up spending 3.5 hours talking about everything. We both remarked that the tables around us have all turned over at least thrice since we sat down and the lunch crowd was starting to thin out. Much of what I told her about my life seemed incredulous such as the ex-highschool boyfriend who stalked me from Facebook last winter or the reigniting of the relationship with Justin again. Even I admitted wholeheartedly that if I didn’t know it was true myself (and had blog posts, friends and other methods of documentation at hand to prove it), I would have thought I was a total bullshitter. Katishna has always said that I don’t create the drama but that drama followed me where I went.
My life, in a lot of ways, is pretty extraordinary in a Lifetime movie kind of way. Cathrynne wrote of much of what I was feeling recently, about the confessional side of writing. Since 1996, I’ve been pouring out my heart and soul, laying bare everything that I was for the world to see and not giving a damn who saw it. Age, perhaps, has dampened that need for dissipation of the soul. There are some horrors in my life that I’m not sure I want to revisit quite so soon.
The relationship fall-out with TheEx, for example, still reverberates in ways I never expected. Steph, my expert on all things with crazy men, said that it’s almost impossible to think I would be completely healed in such a short amount of time considering the intensity and brevity of the relationship itself. I know she’s right, but me being me wants the fall-out to be over.
Before the winter semester ended, I spoke to one of my professors about going on for my PhD (which she does fully support) but I was worried that I would not bring anything new to the table of research. The best advice she gave was that one can always bring something new to the table, even in academia when it looks like everything has been researched to death, one can always bring a new or fresh perspective on an issue. I think writing is a lot like that – the basics of writing have been done to death, we know this. It’s the original voices and their perspectives that make all the difference. I admire a lot of writers in a variety of genres, so I know it’s possible to do this. I just now have to figure out how and that will start with the short story for Justin, because he asked.
Tag: Wednesday The Pug
A recap, an update, and the like.
Right now there is a battle of noises happening between Wednesday and the radiators. Wednesday wins, hands down. For an 18lb Pug, she snores like no ones bidness. A lot has happened in the last month, way too much to document in one post, so I’ll give the run down (in no particular order):
- Moved from Grand Rapids to Royal Oak on 1/11/09 and am currently enraptured with my new surroundings.
- Started my new job as a reference librarian at Wayne on 1/5/09. Yes, notice the disparity in dates. For the first week, I commuted from E. Lansing to Detroit. (As I’m still in school, I am not technically a librarian, but a GSA. Technically, I’m not a GSA but a library intern. Manager refers to interns AND GSAs as “GSAs” to keep it simpler for her, and well, I’m doing reference librarian work. It’s all semantics.)
- Am attempting to transfer from $corporate_bookstore in G-Rap to one that is (obvs) local to me. Downside to this development is that one of the stores in my new area closed and currently they are placing the displaced employees in local stores first before transfers. I’m not getting a paycheck BUT my bennies will hold out until the beginning of March as a last case scenario. Broke but if anything happens, I’m covered.
- I got a 4.0 last semester, which is awesome (obvs). This semester the classes are more challenging and I need to get my groove on to keep up with the work. I’m taking a digital imaging archiving class, library management and cataloging. Currently, my plan of work is still to obtain the IS and Archival certification along with my MLIS but who knows how that will end up.
- I’ve got a new man in my life – Justin. It’s almost like out of one of those torrid RomComs: We met, fell in love and immediately shacked up together over a decade ago and were together for a year or so while we were both living in California. We split, I moved out of state to D.C. and haven’t spoken to him in nearly a decade. He got in touch with me shortly after TheEx and I broke up last March and we became friends again. He stood by me and worked with me while going through all the residual shit from the break-up. Ideas were tossed about seeing each other again, as friends, and the idea of getting involved with anyone romantically seemed highly stupid (of me) and made me queasy. But we talked, and talked some more, and continued to talk almost every night for over eight months. Decided somewhere along the way we should reconnect physically as friends and talked about the probability of romance — but there were no guarantees that anything physical was going to happen, rather, just the excitement of seeing each other was enough. But the romance DID happen, organically, and it’s better than before. MUCH better. It’s downright awesome. Everything I liked about him is still there and everything that irritated me changed for the better and he feels the same way about me. The biggest difference is the passion is much higher and hotter and we talk – about everything, even if it means that what we are saying is not going to bode well for the other person. While a decade younger than TheEx, he handles things much more maturely and Justin gets me — he’s always gotten me. The awesome part is that this has all the sparks of something “new” while we have memories of the old. He’s a wonderful man, I’m so glad he came back into my life. He means the world to me, I’d be completely lost without him.
- shesgotplans.net has garnered enough hits on the library school front to encourage me to continue to write more about my experiences, trials and tribulations of going to school and working in an academic library (and possibly holding down another part-time job). This upcoming weekend, I’m doing the final push to get everything unpacked and sorted before the semester gets into full swing so that I can concentrate more on doing updates here. Sometimes I feel like I have so much to write about here and I don’t because I didn’t make the time for it but I want to change that (for the better obvs). There is a lot going on in librarianship that is not being addressed or overlooked and that just makes the profession even farther behind in viability and interest to potential students. I feel I have a lot I can contribute to this discussion so of course I will be opening up my mouth and talking about it.
It’s late and I have a zillion things to do tomorrow before my cataloging class. Yay Dewey and LOC! Go team!
lots to update
Holy shit, I can’t believe it’s nearly 4am. Tonight I wanted to go to bed around midnight as I’m going out with Danny tomorrow and Saturday I’m going out with a tonne of people (lotus_flower, ministerofsilly, theology class paul and his wife, matt and danny. No idea what we are doing or where are going but I love planning stuff like this. Maybe I should be a party coordinator 🙂 Anyways, lots happened in the last few days so I’m gonna lj-cut stuff and read what you like. 🙂
horrorscope for August 1
What would happen if you just simply decided to take care of yourself today, lisa? This is what the planets are trying to tell you. You need to relax, to be taken care of, and to close you eyes and dream or fall asleep. Leave those daily tasks behind you today. You need peace and quiet. Lie down and empty your mind of all your worries. You don’t need to act, you don’t need to react, just lie down and relax…
She called and left me a message yesterday as I was walking out the door to the tattoo place and she placed him on the bus back to GR (he is from here). If you didn’t read the SUPER LONG ENTRY, a summary:
[23:42] modgirllisa: So let me get this straight, you haven’t seen him in 12 years let alone talk to him and you invited him down to see you in Cincy with you paying the bus fare. He shows up with five bucks and a: you are surprised that he wants to take advantage of you and b: you want to keep him there because you want to torture him?
[23:43] modgirllisa: If that is all true, are you fucking insane?
23:45] houseguesfromhell: well.. your paraphrasing makes it sound a little different than how I said it…
[23:45] houseguesfromhell: but you are right
I called her on the way to literacy training today and she told me she got a call from his boyfriend and he (her friend) is apparently a crackhead (as in, smokes the pipe not as in a figure of speech) and her friend the crackhead had apparently asked her for MONEY when she called to see if he was home okay. I wanted to shake her through the phone. The issue here is that she has had this habit of getting in touch with people from her past and then acts surprised when they aren’t what they seem. Now, I have no problems keeping in touch with people from my past but for fuck sakes, you have to draw the line somewhere and she doesn’t get that. She still acts like if they are one way a decade ago, they are the same today.
I feel very good for standing up to her. She’s VERY controlling and she takes everything as apersonal slight . We will see what happens with our friendship as her date to move back to GR approaches.
Before I bought my Canon A300, I had a Kodak DX3500 that Paul (my ex) and I had bought on my birthday in 2001. At the time, the camera for it’s features was the best bet for money. After buying the docking station, the recharge batteries, the memory card and the four year extra warranty, we spent close to 500 bucks.
As time went on, it became apparent the camera was a piece of shit. THe reason was that every image it took look like it was smeared with vaseline. As time progressed and I had found the warranty (heh), I decided on my move back to GR I was going to have it fixed and maybe get it upgraded to a newer camera if the warranty would allow it. Best Buy no longer did onsite repair and it was shipped back to Kodak and Kodak “reset the factory defaults” and shipped it back to me. The camera had the EXACT same issue when it came back and even though ministerofsilly and lotus_flower have the same camera, they weren’t experiencing the same problems, so that pretty much made up my mind to just buy a new camera and give the Kodak to my brother. Well right after I had ordered my Canon, the Kodak died. I took it back to Best Buy, told them it was broken and said “It might be something as stupid as the batteries” (cos silly me didn’t check to see if the recharges had actually stopped working) but if it isn’t the batteries, could they please look at it again and figure out what the hell is wrong with it because it stil has the SAME problem and while previous Best Buy techs told me that it was the memory card (the ones that you buy not the one internal) I disagreed because I had gone through several memory cards that worked FINE in other cameras and it wasn’t the memory card.
Well Best Buy called me yesterday to tell me that Kodak sent the camera back and it was not worth repairing apparently and I get to go into Best Buy to get a NEW ONE! WOOO! How cool is that? I’ll have two new cameras 🙂 I was planning on giving this one to my brother but now he can go fuck himself. Please see next post 😉
I won’t bore you with details on my family history but what I will say as a backstory is that my parents got married, had me and my mom left when I was five months old (I was not a shotgun wedding baby ;). She dated my brother’s father later on and got pregnant with him. My mom has always felt that since I had a father figure in my life (hah) that my brother deserved more attention. He is still the favorite with ehr even though in the seven months since I’ve been back to GR, I’ve seen her on the average of about once a month and he’s seen mother twice.
With that being said, my brother and I have a strange relationship. It’s been very off for a long time now and it’s slowly escalating till we no longer speak for weeks at a time though we live two miles apart. While yes, this is sad, the part is that I am REALLY tired of him mocking me, my lifestyle, my choices, and everything else, especially my dogs (when I’m not around, he used to bring his pitbull Chaos over and force her to fight wednesday. Wednesday weighs 17lbs, Chaos weighs like 60). He’s borrowed money from me and never paid me back, I’ve fixed his broken down 86 Caddy more times I can count, I mean really the list is endless. Well tonight took the cake. He had called me about getting copies of his resume printed and I called him back and I guess I rambled on the phone for a few minutes as I was on break from Literacy training and when he called me back, he mocked me for a good solid 2 minutes on my cell phone. I called him back, very coherent and said “You know, I’ve busted my ass helping you out in your time of need (which is often I might add) and you always mock me for everything, grow the fuck up and find other friends to “help you”. I clicked the ‘end’ button on my cell phone as angerily as one can click an ‘end’ button. Tonight after I got home he got online (phone got turned back on apparently) and he started giving me shit, AGAIN. I said look, I’m not helping you and he said “Well what the fuck do you do all day you are lazy you are xyz”. Yes, I don’t have a job, but I am doing stuff and you know, unless I’m at your door with no place to live it’s not your place to comment on my lifestyle. So then he launches into how it’s my fault how he lost out on a job oppturnity because he couldn’t get in touch with me to get his resume in. This is MY problem? I don’t think so and told him so, he has several copies of his resume that I sent him numerous times. This went on, I resent him a copy (three times) of his resume tonight and I bet I won’t hear much from him in the future. I really do not know what is going to happen with him at this point and to be honest at the path we are heading right now, I don’t see a bright future.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my tendency to get anal about my credit report. The number one thing right now that is killing me is that GMAC (car bill) is showing up twice, making it look like I have two accounts open. WHen I called equifax, I started an investigation and I got a letter today from them telling me that Equifax had contacted GMAC and that both accounts were correct. I launched into another explaintion and the person who took the call said “well, there wasn’t that in the investigation, so I’ll resubmit it and it will be taken care of”. I called GMAC and they said the reason why this happened was because it the original billing office was closed and all accounts were moved to another one and hence why they got renumbered. They said this will be resolved within 72 hours. So, lets hope on that shall we.
For some reason, people always seem surprised that not only am I single, but I’m not really dating. While I appreciate the candor in them thinking I’m really that hot to trot, I think a lot of has to do with being well, as eccentric as I am. Last I recall, being tall, chubby, heavily tattooed and pierced, a geek, a gamer, a pug owner and a student weren’t in big demands these days. But no matter, I really don’t feel like there isn’t someone out there for me, rather, I feel like it’s gonna be a long wait and I suck at dating so what the hell is the point because I get bored quickly and there seems to be no end to litany of stupid questions. One chap who chats me up on Yahoo! always talks about us getting together but never really does anything to plan getting together. I once asked him something and he said “I talk to you all the time, isn’t that enough?” Um, no genius, we never MET and if we are even remotely interested in each other wouldn’t it be prudent to say, swap emails? Maybe call ? OH I DON’T KNOW! Besides he lives in Chicago, and while he is cute and has a great taste in music, fuck him and his vinyl.
With that being said, I have in the past posted personal ads in both SF, DC and here in GR. Both SF and DC were more like looking for like minded people getting together (not necessairly sexual) but because I wanted to expand my friends groups. None of them panned out except for one guy whom I’ve simply become good friends with (hi niasyn ;] ) And even then due to differing schedueles we really don’t chat that much.
At any rate, I did the same thing when I came back to GR, I did the same thing. A few intersting people responded but it never panned out. A few weeks ago, I was talking to a few people in a irc channel I hang out with and decided to post and ad on yahoo! again to see if anything had changed in the last six months. This time, I even included pics! (Yahoo personal name is buttercupthepowerpuffgrrl if you are curious). No nibbles for a few days and I wasn’t really that worried about it. The pics were posted of me being dorky for a reason and after finding out a few couples that I knew had met via personals and had gotten married, I felt like I had hope of that maybe I could meet some interesting people.
If you don’t read the ad, here is what I say in short: I’m tall, thick bodied, caucasin, black hair and brown eyes and am single, not affliated with any religion, I’m in education/acadameia, I have tattoos and piercings, I’ve lived in several places like DC and SF, I’m in college as a undergrad. I am a music and movie buff, I love cartoons. I giggle a lot. I’m not your typical girl. I also do not have kids nor am I sure about wanting any (they do not have an option for yes i want kids but later). I post what I’m looking for is the following:
“A geek who reads. A geek who reads, like going out and is tall! A geek who reads, likes pop culture, playing video games, going out, is tall and has a british accent! 😉 So, I’m picky, this is my ad and I can be as picky as I wanna be.”
And as most people would say, that sums me up in short, right? Right. I’m pretty specific about who I am and what I want. So please tell me, why then a man who is looking for a black woman, ages 18-50 with KIDS AND is a christian who attends services MORE THAN TWICE A WEEK who is a stay at home mom would respond to my ad? Or the guy who said (and I quote directly)
“i know im not the kind of guy you are
looking for but i just had to tell you your
ad is the most interesting , cool and honest
ad ive ever read i think its great and you
must be too well good luck”
Which is fine, but the part about the first guy kills me because obviously i’m not black, christian (or at least any prescriped religion), and I don’t have kids and I am NOT a stay at home mom (pugs don’t count). The second fact is is the fact that yahoo allows people to IM the person who wrote the ad, which shows up in trillian as (and from what others tell me, with them as well) as my regular Yahoo address. So That is a bit um, freaky. Because I’d like to keep the two seperate thanks!
But WHY would someone respond if I am not what they are looking for or what they are looking for? And if it were once or twice, I’d be like, that’s fine but this happens EVERY single time I put an ad up. Geez. Hello. I’m not interested in hanging out with you and mother on a sunday afternoon.
Another thing that kills me is that on my yahoo profile page ) several things, like my nickname is “lisa”, i have a long set of interests, my website, that i AM female, where I am located (at least general idea) and I’m in education. Now the funny thing is that I get all these yahoos on yahoo! who will IM me “A/S/L” or “What are your interests (um hello, it’s on my profile page moron) or my particular favorite (this happened this past tuesday)
16:13] dreamcatchermja: Hello There, My name is Michael. I am from Wyoming. I am a Working Chef but I am a Double-major in Accounting and Business Management at Davenport University
[16:38] modgirllisa: hello.
[16:39] dreamcatchermja: Hello
[16:39] dreamcatchermja: How are you today?
[16:40] modgirllisa: just peachy
[16:40] dreamcatchermja: So where are you at now?
[16:40] modgirllisa: in my apartment
[16:41] dreamcatchermja: In G.R.
[16:41] modgirllisa: yes
[16:41] dreamcatchermja: What’s your name?
[16:41] modgirllisa: Lisa
[16:42] dreamcatchermja: Hello Lisa
[16:42] dreamcatchermja: So what would you like to know about me
[16:42] modgirllisa: Nothing.
[16:42] dreamcatchermja: Why?
[16:42] modgirllisa: Because you sound boring.
[16:43] dreamcatchermja: Whatever
[16:43] dreamcatchermja: I like to go to concerts, the beach, and I have jump off a bridge and more
[16:43] modgirllisa: That’s nice.
[16:43] modgirllisa: bye now.
[16:44] dreamcatchermja: I have played chicken with trains and I used to swim in Thunderstorms in Lake Michigan
[16:44] dreamcatchermja: I am Risk Taker so call me “Boring.”
[16:44] modgirllisa: First off, playing chicken with trains and swimming in thunderstorms is not being ‘edgy’ it’s being stupid
[16:44] dreamcatchermja: So you think you are a challenge or what?
[16:44] modgirllisa: and you are boring.
[16:45] dreamcatchermja: I don’t think so.
[16:45] dreamcatchermja: That is when I was young
[16:45] dreamcatchermja: Now I am working hard to have the finer things in life
[16:45] dreamcatchermja: I am going to own several mall businesses
[16:46] dreamcatchermja: So what do you for a living?
[16:47] dreamcatchermja: So what do you for fun?
[16:48] dreamcatchermja: I like to go to thh Beach, play sports, and dance
[16:51] dreamcatchermja: I’m sorry if offended you. Are you ok
[16:56] dreamcatchermja: So what kinds of things spark your interest?
[17:03] dreamcatchermja: I would like know more about you and your interest
[17:10] dreamcatchermja: So tell me something about you? What makes you so fun?
Now first off, I live in Wyoming, subburb of grand rapids, NOT the state 😉 Notice the time breaks, I’m not responding because he’s boring and I left the house and I come back and he’s talking to himself. Jesus christ on a pogostick.
Now, another person who IM’d me recently, YET another winner:
[02:40] beam_me_1: interesting list of interests
[02:40] modgirllisa: thanks
[02:42] beam_me_1: Nin to de Sade is quite a leap
[02:42] beam_me_1: profound to profane
[02:43] modgirllisa: not really
[02:43] beam_me_1: i m all ears
[02:44] modgirllisa: that’s a terrible thing to be
[02:46] beam_me_1: matter of opinion
[02:46] beam_me_1: i m all tongue too – at times
[02:47] modgirllisa: again, another terrible thing to be
[02:50] beam_me_1: and you are a sharp shooter
[02:53] modgirllisa: why thank you, i think
[02:54] beam_me_1: its easy to point and shoot – isn’t it?
[02:54] modgirllisa: well apparently not if you are still here.
[02:55] beam_me_1: i didnt say you were hitting the target
[03:01] beam_me_1: the lisa chronicles
[03:01] modgirllisa: can i help you with something?
[03:02] modgirllisa: or do you ljust like to repeat what is already clear?
[03:07] beam_me_1: what is clear is that no one is interested in mundane
daily lives when there is so much misery
[03:08] modgirllisa: no, what is clear that you are boring me.
[03:09] beam_me_1: or getting under your skin
[03:09] beam_me_1: who reads this?
[03:10] beam_me_1: that you brought a doggie bag home
[03:10] beam_me_1: no amount of school will cure that
[03:13] beam_me_1: it must feel good to feel important
[03:19] modgirllisa: it surely does.
[03:19] beam_me_1: i meant self-important
Here is another one just because it cracks me up:
[01:24] zepher46: …yeah..baby!!…
[01:25] modgirllisa: i’m sorry?
[01:26] zepher46: ….I mean like …YEAH..BABY!!!…
[01:34] modgirllisa: um, sure.
[02:08] zepher46: …later baby….right now its time for
And this one too:
[16:36] iamr0b0t: saw your butt
[16:36] modgirllisa: that’s nice.
[16:36] iamr0b0t: cute
[16:37] iamr0b0t: thats it
[16:37] modgirllisa: thanks. have a nice day.
[16:37] iamr0b0t: you too
[I had posted a pic of my ass on my website. The direct link is here.]
I mean, what the fuck? Heh. Yah and the time breaks are all not modified by me in any sense. But I just don’t GET it! I mean yes, some people would argue that I’m putting myself out there and thusly I can expect these kind of comments (like the ones who see Marquis de Sade and expect that I will be all about getting into BDSM and shit, on yahoo. Yes I like text bdsm. Oh yah baby! Don’t you see me hanging out in the porn forums all the time?) and then the ones who when I had tall people listed on my interests (since removed) at yahoo, would IM me and they would be these fetish super short guys who were looking to have wild sex with a tall female. And while yes, I could remove the interests and remove the website but you know, fuck it. I don’t have anything to hide and I’m very well versed in ignoring the lamers.
I MEAN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, IS THERE NOT A SINGLE GUY WHO IS NORMAL (well normal for me anyways…)
If you are not in the know, Thunderbird is the stand alone mail client that is spun off of Mozilla project (). Thanks to kethryvis and our mutual friend Gordon, I was able to figure out it maybe a bug (or a quirk):
I feel so proud!
My final training tonight for literacy training and I got a nify cert. I’m pretty excited. However, I may have fucked up my chances (I think anyways) because I approached the coordinator about a problem I’m having. It’s long been said that I might have a learning disablity because of how I act in certain situations (I can’t concentrate or focus, I have difficult with some tasks such as I’m more of a visual and tactile learner so that auditory learning such as in classrooms is difficult) and a few other things. Apparently there is a local
learning placement program that will test me and it is income based (as in i don’t have any so perhaps this wil be free!) . She seemed concerned and it’s not that I can’t read obviously or comprehend but I’m thinking perhaps they might not let me tutor because of this? I dunno, I’ll find out tomorrow when I call her 🙂
So fingers crossed!!
Damn, I’m done!
BED!
It’s the End of the World as we know it…
I am tired as fuck.
My international biz class “work” comprised of 6 weekly assignments, a country paper, research paper and our debate, plus the exam which was take home. She wanted electronic copies of all of our work so I had burned her a cd with everything divided into neat little folders marking which each was. My presentation sucked last night but that had more to do with being tired than with not being prepared. The only ONLY thing I have left is my final which I started but never finished and it’s eight questions most of which the answers are in the book. A couple of people were not prepared to hand in their final papers last night (again, I was like the only one) and something that amused me was that the ditzy chick (also named lisa) who had been my partner ripped off most of my work for her presentation. Myself and one other girl were the only ones who had actual “hand outs” for our presentation so I knew I was going to do well in the grade department. Heh.
Came home last night, immediately changed into jammies and fell asleep on the couch watching BlackAdder II. Rowan Atkinson is so hot 🙂 Heh. I can’t wait for Johnny English to come out.
Woke up, climbed into bed and didn’t realise until I was snuggled in that I had NOT wrapped my tattoo and or put tattoo goo on it so now my arm is stiff with dryness. I’m not terribly worried about ink rejecting due to the dryness as I’m going in a month to have her finish the work and she’ll do touch ups then and I always heal really well even if I’m not up to par with the after-care as I should be.
Woke up at noon (so slept about 12 hours) and felt something crunchy under my legs. “My god!” i thought to myself, “I need to shave my legs, badly!” [I tend to shave everyday but have been slacking to cut time recently.] TUrned out to be dog food (??!?!?!) in my bed. Um, okay, not sure how to explain that one other than the dogs dragging it in bed with me since i was out like a light for 12 hours. Which is, amusing.
Today I’m heading out to get my hair done and then off to go pick up the tshirts for the family reunion for sunday. Have to buy an outfit for dinner tomorrow night dinner with mom and jeff and then it’s off to grab a portable cage for the dogs and then on to come home to finish the exam.
i’m telling you the fun never ends!
about last night…
Inspiration on how the paper should have been written came to me as I. was. driving. to. class. buh. hah.
Matt showed up at 3pm on the dot, we covered exam material (again) and I typed up his paper (at five bucks a page man!) I edited the shit out of his paper because he repeated himself with quotes galore, more than he needed need to. When I mean quotes I mean like a full TYPED page for a quote. Thanks to kethryvis, I learned the beauty of spacing, margins, fonts and leading. She is da bomb shiz.
Matt and I had planned on getting to AQ at about 5pm, hah! We left at 6pm and got to school with ten minutes to spare before exams.
I ROCKED that exam! I’m emailing Nazi prof on Monday to find out my exam grade. Wooo. The final essay question was in the form of a theological quote which essentially said what is deeper: the depth of spirit or the depth of god. I said depth of god. Re-reading what I wrote over before I turned it in, I sounded like I was xtian 😮 heh. Oh well.
I met the gang on the front stoop at school and we headed over to Bombay Cusine for fud. mmmmm. Got mine spicey level of 9 out of 10 and the chefs went to town. Had to add a little yogurt sauce there, you know, I am a white girl after all. Will go with an 8 next time. Though I have left overs in the fridge. mmmm.
Sucked down a few black and tans and Paul and I were the only ones who wanted to go to Mulligans for after dinner drinks and pool, everyone else was “i’m tired.” etc. His wife I wanted to beat with a platform flipflop. She got all preachy about how I was an atheist (which is NOT true) and she is one of those people who get penny pinching about dinner bills. I kept stealing glances at Matt during dinner because I don’t get it! She was so fundie and everything Paul liked, she didn’t. And the whole penny pinching at the dinner table really irked me well. I had thrown in the 40 bucks matt gave me for typing his paper to pay for my share. I had no idea what my share was but then Amy brought out a checkboo! Ugh, it was terrible.
As we walked outside, Matt stole up to me and said if we were going to ask Paul out again, and I doubt that we will. The wifey made it clear that she is not having him have female friends. Very clear. Ugh, whatever sister. Amy wanted me to call her for drinks (so what, that you can bring your checkbook??) and Matt and I are already going out this week.
Then I nearly got into a car crash as some hippie fucker pulled out in front of me, running a red light. Cheeky monkey. Came home, played Animal Crossing for a few hours, to unwind and now it’s back to the grind as I finish my week o’hell out.
I was in bed by midnight, which is RARE!
I’m sick of spending these lonely nights training myself not to care
i feel like i should have the back of my hand stapled to my forehead.
i do not typically, at least in my opinion, talk frankly about sex in this journal because i’m tired of fending the “negative” connotations of being frank and upfront about it. There has not, in my opinion, been positive comments about it, at least to my face. I’m tired of people thinking every banal sex joke or website or something remotely fucking sexual somehow will interest me, simply because i’m more open than their wife/gf/fiance or whatever. I’m tired of being thought of as the whore of babylon. This is not, of course, new. this has always ‘been’ an issue since I was well, in puberty and a virgin, in which I remained for many years (a virgin, not in puberty). However, people seem to associate sexual awareness == whore and you know, i’m tired of the comments i get about it. Considering the number of people i’ve slept with in the last 7 years can be counted on one hand with room to spare, it’s always amusing that yet people persist in thinking i’m sleeping around town.
With that said, I continue with my story.
My houseguess-from-hell is back in town and this time she has gotten worse. She reprogrammed all my remotes to work on TIVO only (which, fucking pissed me off and yet i said nothing) and she’s made snide comments about things I told her in private in public and has been basically driving me up the wall. this is just the start.
She has a thing about the past, as in she won’t let go of it. Everytime she’s been back in town, there has been a trip down memory lane for her and consists of her trackng down a few of her exfucks for what reason, I cannot discern. Since I’ve been back, I’ve tracked down one person, and that was one of my best friends for many years and since that blow out between he and I, I have not looked back. I’m not the same girl I was when I moved away 7 years ago and I’m not the same girl I was in high school. I have nothing in common with these people.
She’s tracked down a guy we have both fucked. I won’t bother mincing words because really, it’s 2003 and I’m calling a spade a spade. I do not wish this guy negative energy, however, I really do not see the point in me seeing him as even with most people i DO keep in touch with, i’mfinding that i’m getting pulled away from them in terms of common interests. At any rate, she’s intoned that she thought i’d want to see him and the schedule i have, it seemed unlikely i would be able to make their little tete-et-tete. But apparently , she got in touch with him tonight and called me 15x (I was too busy playing animal crossing) to tell me this. Now, she and I had talked about meeting up with my brother tomorrow morning (along with her son) but she deemed 10am too late for breakfast. She gets up at 7:30. Sometimes earlier. Everyday. Now she’s invited him to breakfast. On my birthday, she intially did not want to go with me stating that 8pm was too late to eat dinner but changed her mind at the last minute when she realised I was still going with other friends. Now for this breakfast , when Jeff (my brother) told her that he wanted 10am, she declined but when this guy told her 10am, she insisted ANYTIME !
Now, the thing is, like I said, i don’t wish this guy ill will, but in all reality, i don’t really see WHAT in possible we could have in common. The last time he saw me was ten plus years ago and i weighed 100lbs less. That was not a typo. What was also interesting is that my ‘relationship’ with him was made into the local injoke (since he and I had sex in a bathtub amongst other places) but her relationship with him was not. I, again, do not bear this guy ill will, I just do not have an interest in seeing him.
Now, the thing is, I realise today, the housegues and my brother are two of a kind. Both of them have this “stab or be stabbed mentality”, and everything accounts for something. For instance, if you don’t send her a card for her birthday or whatever holiday, she won’t even send you one on yours, simply because you didn’t in the first place. She’s about tit for tat and you know, the more I sit here and the more I think about it, I’m not really wanting to put myself in a position to be with her, my brother and some guy i fucked 10 years ago for a breakfast meeting. Hello keg to powder to match.
Now let me examine this a bit more clearer, my brother and I have had estranged relationship for the last month. Since my birthday. Now, I invited him to come along on that date on the condition that he pay his own way. I warned him that if he did not have money, don’t show up. I said this MANY times. I did not have money to pay for him, period. Now, he shows up and brings his roommate, without telling me. They (roommate, brother, houseguest) decend to the car where they wait to leave. Now, apparently this is all MY fault because they left me standing there feeling like an idiot with my other friends. Not that i don’t love the other people who came up, i do, but apparently it’s my fault for thinking that houseguest, roommate, brother were being rude. Right.
We get to the resturant and wait to be seated. Brother and roommate go drinking at the bar and we are finally seated to eat dinner. I tell my brother, AGAIN (at least a dozen times now privately), no alcohol, no money no food. I’m broke. He spends 15 bucks on alcohol, gets the most expensive dinners on the plate and then hands me 3 dollars. 3 dollars to cover over 40 bucks in stuff, if not more. I’m really sorry but I thought that was the total lack of respect and rudeness Houseguest sides with my brother, said “you should not be spreading his business on the table”. My brother is a pathological liar, and i have no qualms puttig the chips on the table and i give a fuck all about the result of public ideals in this case. I had, no money. I used the last 60 bucks i had in my wallet to pay for that dinner. My brother and I got into a screaming match over that and few other things. ANother instance, he uses my dogs as bait to his pitbull. such as, pinning wednesday in the same cage as chaos and letting them go at it thinking it’s funny. He’s stolen from my house and thought it was okay. If you are that broke you need to eat 6 month old box of mac and cheese, then fine. But you know, ask first. He owes me thousands from the six months alone. he’s absused my genorosity to the point where i no longer can trust him with anything. He’ll never ever say he’s sorry.
oh well you know
it’s different now
you’ll go stabbing yourself in the neck
welcome to my world (part duex)
Well, there is a lot to catch up on, namely, the drive here, being back in GR for the last two weeks and all the things in between. I haven’t been real motivated to keep writing, and I don’t know really why.
Right now the world is in a flux as the movers are nearly a week late bringing up my stuff (thought I’ve been spending money like crazy buying things for the apt), my exfiance Danny has decided I’m his Tuesday night fill in (and he hasn’t yet told his roommate/exgf I’m back in town which means I cannot call his place and I can only seem him xxx times/day/whatever). He’s also been hinting about us sleeping together – again and the problem is I don’t know where I stand on that. I know I made the vow of celibacy for a year but I’m making him jump through hoops regardless but I don’t really feel attracted to him anymore. Tonight he said something and I responded in kind about the jumping in hoops and he said “why do i have to?” I said “because it’s different now. I’m not easy lay to get into bed anymore.” And that part is at least true. Not only will one have to provide medical history but one should not expect that based on past experiences that I will simply lay down and open thine legs. I know I have to let him go, I just can’t do it yet.
I feel about as sexual as a turnip right now (oh baldrick!) and the jeans I bought last week are already too fucking baggy (I’m thinking it was a misprint in sizing, same size other pair of jeans are still tight from recent weight gain).
At any rate, things have been very surreal.
But, Pugsley is at a new home, staying with a local friend who has a pug-mix and wanted company for the dog. The girls are dirivng me bat shit with their codependncy, lilly is scratching herself to death thanks to no humidifier and the bowl of water trick is not working too swiftly. My main pc is doing its own little thing and i can’t do squat until my shit gets here. WHich REALLY sucks is that tomorrow (Wednesday) i am going to the college for a campus tour and classes start Monday and my shit is to arrive THIS WEEKEND.
oh boohoo.
confidential to D in VA: Awesome about the peppers! Are they still in the PPG cup i put them in? I figured scuba would not last long with the peppers 😉 I mean. the man has no domestication to him — have you heard about the colors of his new house? 🙂 hehe. I was surprised they had grown one pepper at all — but I’m glad you are taking care of them 🙂
getting started
the month of April has whizzed by pretty quickly and for it weren’t the fact that, well i just lost my train of thought, so there is no fact.
Sam and her husband Brendan came down twice this month, sending Sam and I into the flurry of shopping at Ikea, HomeDepot, and shopping for clothes.
Sam and I are nearly the same height (she’s 5’11 and I’m a smidgen taller) and our bodies are shaped very similar. We discovered that we wore nearly the same size and so i gave Sam a pair of jeans that were small on me but fit me fine. I took her shopping and let her enjoy the wonderment of finding clothes that FIT. We stormed HomeDepot at midnight picking up a level, anchors and an electric screwdriver to hang up cd-racks, shelves and anything else we could get our hands on from our nearly thrice spending sprees at Ikea. And thanks to Sam’s great sense of level and physics, my apartment now rocks.
Our first time setting up the cd-racks and picture frames (that she, of course, hand painted out of sheer boredom and discovered that she loved doing it) were off by quite a few inches. We *thought* it looked level, but her husband came in and looked at the wall and started laughing his ass off (as well as paul) because of the crookedness of the racks and frames. We are now the tool-time girls of Northern Virginia.
I love having Sam and Brendan down here as since they are a couple (and Brendan used to live with Paul many moons ago) and we all get along (there were days way back when when we all did’ not get along.) so well. But I know the drive down here is hard for them (300 miles one way but yet it always turns out to be an all day even for them as something always comes up — you know like Easter weekend traffic!) and I’m attempting to reciprocate by going back up there but scheduling time when we all have time seems to be a conflict. That and we are all lazy 🙂 I would love to go on a vacation with them somewhere new where we can call chill out for a week or so. *hinthinthint*
Rob’s roommate, S., and I got to talking a while back and decided to join weight watchers together (she prefer to be anonymous at this point) and start working out. I’m starting on a journal to get motivated on this. The whole schism of WW is that it’s a point system and you have x amount of points available to everyday. You can bank points and you can exercise points off — but the goal is that it helps people to lose weight and do a new way of thinking. I’m finishing up week 1 and so far (surprise surprise) and I’ve done fairly well for myself. Stayed within my point range and even worked out. The journal will keep a somewhat updated blabbering (I’m using blogger for this one) of the diet, weekly weigh-ins and what not. I’m really really really wanting this as I had promised myself to be thin by the time I turned 30 (which is in a little over a year) and be in shape for the rest of my life before I end up getting diabetes or anything else that runs through my family due to obesity. Yes, I am considered obese — I’m 100lbs over my “target” weight (and that’s at the high end scale). I’m shooting for a goal of 170-180 as being my “goal” weight but I need to take it 10 percent at a time and then work on it from there. I just got overly excited when browsing some online shops like oldnay.com and gap.com as they now carry larger sizes (up to a 20) but by their standards, I’m too big for a 20. which is funny because I can fit into a size 20 at lane Bryant but as S. pointed out, Lane Bryant also sizes up 1/2 size for clothes.
I hated being that inbetween weight a few years back where I had been too big for normal clothes and too small for Lane Bryant. Now the desire to feel and look sexy is far outweighing the eating and the simple ability to want to wear freaking JEANS comfortably is motivating me to do this.
The irony is that S. reminds me a lot of my friend Sherry from back home in Michigan — down to their attitude about certain things. I’ve tried looking Sherry up online and called her last known phone number, but it had been disconnected. She knows how to find me if she really wanted to — but not seeing someone for nearly two years can change a lot about a person.
As the month slowly comes to a close, I’m rushing around getting things together for my brothers 22nd birthday, Paul’s 21st birthday and my upcoming birthday in June (I’ll be 29 going on 22 — again). My father has been in my thoughts more so in these last few weeks as he’s been dead a year on 4/25 and that was with his death my whole anxiety had come unleashed out into the open. Last summer was major hell and I sure as fuck do not plan on going through that same hell again this summer.
Working towards improving something, even yourself, is such hard work. I could see where I slip as I watched paul eat Oreo’s tonight (I had two — which used up quite a few points and opted not to have anymore this evening) and thinking about the strange dreams I’ve been having and wondering what they mean, the smell of the fresh cut grass and feeling the sun burn against my arm as my legs stick to the leather of my car seats. Everything seems to be winding down nicely and everything seems calm for the moment.
Now only if I can get Wednesday (the spayed female pug) to stop mounting and attempting to fuck Lily (the unspayed female pug), my world would be a better place.
x0x0x0x
Lisa
year in review: 2000
January: paul and i started off the new year by me not remembering what had happened the night before. The alcohol consumed by myself was enough to force a blackout. something mumbled about blowjobs, bathrooms, and me being the life of the party all night.
February: paul and i head to NYC for LWE:NYC to meet with friends from #userfriendly and for his work purposes. We drove. Never ever will I drive anywhere farther than a few hours again. When I got to the hotel, I cried like a little girl because the NYC drivers *are* as bad as they say they are. i partied with geeks, saw times square, and paul and i got lost on the way into DC on the way home. We ended driving up the wrong side of 495 and had to cut through DC in the middle of the night.
march: my lovely brother came and stay with us for a week for spring break. oh joy!
April: my father passed away on April 24, 2000.
may: spent a week in Toronto for the funeral. paul turned 20. love and birth in one month. my fathers 73rd birthday would have been this month.
June: my 28th birthday.
July: Brian (pauls brother) comes and stays with us for nearly 2 months. I love his little brother 🙂 Wednesday is born.
august: i meet pauls parents and his Spanish grandmother. Brian goes back to Miami. school starts and i miss another semester.
September: We add Wednesday into our household. At 8 weeks and 3lbs she is adorable.
October: paul and i celebrate our one year anniversary by going to Morton’s steak house.
November: paul’s sister Ivette comes and stays with us for thanksgiving weekend and paul cooks up a storm. i nearly kill him in his over Martha Stewart process of making everything perfect. We roast a 26lb turkey for friends and family and there is no leftovers.
December: i plan a weekend trip to Michigan to see my mother, and paul and I fly to Miami for 9 days of fun in the sun. While we are gone, Wednesday gets bit by his aunt’s German shepard and paul and i freak out over our “child”. nadia and greg get married and we formally announce our engagement to the sullivan family.
any given monday
i realized, without realization, what and who i wanted to be. that image, so perfect and clean that had been eluding me these odd twenty-eight years (technically, anything over ten should be 10 such as twenty-eight should be 28. At least for newspaper journalism — MLA handbook). i began my daily ritual, which required me to open up and start writing only to get lost in all those words. a mere mention of “the sound of music” lent me to spending several hours searching about the family via various engines (mamma, hotbot, altavista, google, oh my!) only to find little to nothing on the family. disappointed i started reading various online journals (always the voyeur, never the participant) and lost several hours again.
I’m watching Wednesday chew on the “brides” magazine i had bought nearly a month ago and wonder where all the time has gone (magazine has gone unread as like the rest of my subscriptions to rolling stone, brills content, penthouse letters and nerve among others). a pile nearly 3 feet deep reigns on one my shelves of magazines waiting to be read — the kind you want to read on a Sunday afternoon when it’s raining. one does not go out to buy an inch edition of vanity fair featuring the slightly obsessive gwynnie paltrow when one has that kind of material lying around does one? yes, one certainly does.
I’ve have a big crush on maura. she’s so keen.
life often continues on this spiral I’ve noticed. dreams and wishes and things we want only to never really achieve them. magazines often feel like that kind of etherealness. i think gwynnie paltrow is the WORSE actress known to man (I’ve walked out on Shakespeare in love), but I’m obsessed by her and her life. the glam-carefee life of the social diva. vanity fair spoiled me for the next few days as i dream about what it would be like to have grown up on the upper west side of ny, to summer in the hamptons and to have gone to a private school so elite, your blood must be so blue that it’s black to get in.
it’s in times like this that i often think about my own family and my heritage, how i guffaw about my great-grandfather the booze runner in the 1920’s, my grandfather the bricklayer and my father who was taxi cab driver (as one of his many professions). i dream and wonder why i couldn’t have that kind of life — where money and prestige was something i could have been born to and not dream about.
I REALLY WANT THESE PANTS!.
Wednesday is chewing on my toes.